Well my Mistress’s desktop computer died yesterday. It didn’t take ill and give the opportunity for any treatment. It simply breathed it’s last during the night and refused to start in the morning. My Mistress has given up on ringing the computer engineer, when last time he simply did things she could do for herself and then sent her a bill, so she decided to do something for herself instead and searched on the internet to see if she could diagnose the problem. She may as well just have found a page that said ‘Your computer is dead’, but somehow she has reached the conclusion it is the hard drive and has duly removed the old one and ordered a replacement. I’ve opened a book on whether it will work when the replacement is fitted. I’m offering odds of 50 to 1 against, although I am keeping this information from my Mistress. I think in reality I am willing it to fail as I would like a new laptop and I thought she might get me one with a big screen. She has said she finds it easier to work on a desktop computer, but that’s much less fun.
She has also found an internet site where you can upload page 99 of your book and people give you ratings as to whether they would read the book. You get to know if they would turn the page and what they think. She has loaded a page of her first novel but has to conclude that page 99 doesn’t really give a good flavour, which has been reflected in the ratings she is being given. I asked her to upload my diary, but she said it wasn’t really for books like that. She might take her page down again as at the moment it is depressing her.